1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to delivery mechanisms, and more particularly, to apparatus for receiving a continuous series of discrete, separate business forms or the like, and placing them in a "face up" or "face down" position.
2. Prior Art
In the business forms industry where large volumes of multiple page forms, such as those commonly referred to as snap-set forms, it is often necessary to number the forms sequentially. It is common to number these forms either on the printing press when the forms are initially being printed or on the collator where multiple sheets are brought together, glued and then cut into individual forms.
Delivery units, such as the general type to which the present invention pertains, are usually positioned after the collator or press, in the flow path of the business forms and receive the business forms, place them in a shingled line and convey them to a batching station, also part of the delivery unit, where they are stacked in predetermined numbers of forms in each of the batches and then packaged for shipment. In those cases where these business forms are numbered, it is important that they be stacked in the proper order so that the numbering sequence proceeds from first to last or last to first, as desired.
It is generally most desirable that these consecutively numbered business forms be delivered with the low number on top. With this requirement, a "face up" delivery requires that numbers put on the forms at the press be put on low number first and high number last, while, if the numbers are put on at the collator, they are delivered high number first and low number last.
Thus, in those instances where a "face up" delivery is necessary, with collator numbered sets, for example, a large quantity of overprint at the press must be run so that if any waste or scrap during collating occurs, there will be enough of the business forms to produce the end of the run which will have the needed low or starting number.
A similar problem exists with a "face down" delivery. The difficulty here is just the opposite as that mentioned above in that the numbering on the collator will be from the lowest to the highest number, but numbering on the press will be from the highest to the lowest. This means that in the "face down" delivery, where the business forms were numbered on the press, it will be necessary to run a sufficiently large number of overprint for start up and other possible mistakes at the press. In addition, if difficulties occur at the collator the entire numbering system may be disrupted.
In the past, it has been necessary for the business forms production industry to maintain available at its printing facilities both "face up" and "face down" delivery apparatus in order to accommodate the differences mentioned above in connection with numbering at the press or at the collator. If the types of runs are frequently changed a substantial amount of labor is involved with continuously changing delivery units in order to accommodate the different types of runs. In addition, there is substantial down time in the operation in order to permit these changes to be made.